Most Helpful Customer Reviews
177 of 186 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More Chess Puzzles than any other book I have ever seen!, September 11, 2006
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games (Paperback)
The word is WOW! Gigantic collection of chess puzzles. So many I have only just gotten started after a month!!! Question is which ones are going to help me improve my results in actual play. There are so many, and so many don't seem to be from real games and are filler. [...] But you get a lot of problems in this book and if you want everything probably ever made into a problem this is the book!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
92 of 100 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More Problems caused by too many Problems!, December 20, 2006
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games (Paperback)
This has got to have more chess problems than any other single chess book ever written. If you want want is lots and lots then this book cannot be beat.
But the very fact that this book is so massive creates problems of it's own. A simple question to start with: Do you have almost unlimited time (years and years) to go over about every problem, instructive and not so instructive? Or are you more interested in having well selected problems that are instructive and focus on the most common patterns you are going to come across in actual play?
This book, is loaded with what I call a lot of "filler" problems and a lot of material that is quickly tossed in without much thought toward making this book logically progress from one pattern to another. Simple grouping of "general" types of tactics and ideas is not going to make it.
This book deserves some credit just for being jamm packed. But I would rather suggest tactics/problem books with a more well thought out direction. For a beginner or just beyond that level Bruce Pandolfini's, "Beginning Chess: Over 300 Elementary Problems" and for an intermediate player, Emms "Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book" have condensed plenty of problems into what is more practical to learn.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great piece cooperation manual!, April 30, 2006
This review is from: Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games (Paperback)
I am a scholastic chess coach, teaching kids from how the pieces move all the way up to about 1500-rated. I now require every student to have his or her own copy of this book! This school year, my students (cumulatively) completed more than 5000 of these puzzles, some more than 500 individually.
Polgar doesn't have a lot of text here to read, just tons of puzzles, most of which are game-likely situations. One of the hardest things to teach students is often board vision and cooperation of pieces into attacks and mating attacks. Through repetition, this book helps players learn the patterns that will present them opportunities in their tournament games. My players that are serious about their improvement have, without exception, found that this book has bumped their ratings at least 200 points (some 400 points!) in less than a year!
As a coach, I have found that offering internal club recognition for completing puzzles such as these also improved club-wide interest. Additionally, many of the puzzles you find elsewhere, whether in a book or on-line, will have escape possibilities from the stated "mate-in-two" or other move numbers. Of the 5334 puzzles in this book, my students and I have only found ONE with such a problem!
I would not hesitate to give this book the highest possible review rating as a teaching manual - you don't need to re-write the book when Lazlo has already done it for you
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
